For a diverse nation, we share a remarkable
consensus with respect to educating children. As reflected in polls and focus groups,
Americans are nearly unanimous in their commitment to certain fundamental ideals: that all
children have access to a quality education regardless of family income; that they be
prepared for happy and productive lives; that they be taught the rights and duties of
citizenship; and that the schools help to foster strong and cohesive communities. These
are the ideals of public education.
One hundred and fifty years ago, a band of dedicated reformers
declared that progress toward those ideals was too slow and proposed that a new
institution be created to more effectively promote them. Led by Bostonian Horace Mann, the
reformers campaigned for a greater state role in education. They argued that a universal,
centrally planned system of tax-funded schools would be superior in every respect to the
seemingly disorganized market of independent schools that existed at the time. Shifting
the reins of educational power from private to public hands would, they promised, yield
better teaching methods and materials, greater efficiency, superior service to the poor,
and a stronger, more cohesive nation. Mann even ventured the prediction that if public
schooling were widely adopted and given enough time to work, "nine-tenths of the
crimes in the penal code would become obsolete," and "the long catalogue of
human ills would be abridged."
Though Horace Mann's promised nirvana has clearly failed to
materialize, there is one respect in which he and his fellow reformers were completely
successful: They forged an unbreakable link in people's minds between the institution of
public schooling and the ideals of public education. As generation after generation has
attended public schools and sent its children to public schools, it has become more and
more difficult to see the distinction between the institution itself and the principles it
is meant to uphold. "If you believe in our shared ideals of public education,"
goes the mantra, "then you must support the public schools."
This seemingly innocuous failure to distinguish between means and
ends has had two disastrous consequences. First, it has meant that any criticism of the
public school system could be--and often has been--misconstrued as an attack on the ideals
of public education. As a result, individuals who agree on the ultimate goals of education
but who differ as to the most effective way of achieving those goals are repeatedly and
unnecessarily thrown into conflict. Where cooperation and mutual respect could flourish,
endless bickering and antagonism are the norm.
The second consequence has been an extreme narrowing of vision.
Scholars and policymakers who have equated public education solely with public schooling
have contented themselves with reform efforts that merely tinker around the edges of our
current system. They have consistently failed to consider the vast wealth of evidence that
exists on alternative approaches to schooling, thereby reducing their chances of
identifying the most effective practices.

Competitive educational
markets have consistently done a better job of serving the public than state-run
educational systems.

We have suffered under the weight of these consequences for too
long. Despite decades of heroic efforts to improve public schools, the institution
continues to fall short of our expectations. Over the past 50 years, we have cut the
pupil-teacher ratio in half, quadrupled per-student spending, and tested innumerable
reform programs. In desperation, we have ascribed blame for the system's ills to every
level of public school employee from teachers and principals to administrators and
superintendents. Nevertheless, the ills persist.
The most fundamental skill of all, literacy, has actually been in
decline in this country for at least 30 years. According to the most sophisticated
national and international literacy studies, nearly a quarter of American 16- to
25-year-olds have only the most meager grasp of reading and writing. Pedagogical methods
and teacher training, which were promised to make great strides under the guidance of
government experts, have languished. Some instructional techniques have been sidelined by
the public schools for decades despite their proven effectiveness. And, most poignantly,
the public schools have failed to fulfill one of our most important and universally held
ideals of public education--providing a decent education to all low-income children.
We cannot afford to continue squandering our time and our
children's futures on heated rhetoric and unthinking devotion to the status quo. While
public schooling has become deeply entrenched in our nation's tradition, we must realize
that it is only one among many possible approaches to education. We must not let the force
of habit stand in the way of our ultimate aims. Instead, we must consider a broad range of
school systems to determine which is best suited to advancing those aims.
Since most developed nations adopted state-run school systems
during the 19th century, it might not be immediately obvious where to find examples of
alternative approaches to schooling. The answer has been right behind us all along: the
2,500-year history of education. Our ancestors have tried more and different ways of
educating their children than most people would imagine, yet we continue to ignore their
experiences at our society's peril.
While it doesn't make sense to point to any one historical
education system and try to copy it (there are a number of factors that could cause a
system to work well in one culture and not in another), it does make sense to compare
educational approaches from a variety of times and places, and to identify common elements
of the most successful systems. Any approach to schooling that consistently produced good
results across many different cultures, regardless of the prevailing social, political,
and economic conditions, might have some interesting lessons to teach us.
Five years ago, I began just such a study, comparing school
systems from all over the world, from ancient times to the present, in an attempt to
discover which systems met the needs of citizens, which did not, and why. From classical
Greece through the medieval Islamic empire, from the young American republic up to the
present, a recurrent theme emerged from the hum of the centuries: Competitive educational
markets have consistently done a better job of serving the public than state-run
educational systems. The reason lies in the fact that state school systems lack four key
factors that history tells us are essential to educational excellence: choice and
financial responsibility for parents, and freedom and market incentives for educators.
School systems that have enjoyed these characteristics have consistently done the best job
of meeting both our private educational demands and our shared educational ideals.

After 150 years of experimentation
and decades of disappointment, is it not time that we consider alternatives to the public
school system?

Though it is widely thought that government intervention was
necessary to bring schooling and literacy to the masses, both England and the United
States achieved those milestones before state-run education systems were firmly
established in either nation. It is also ironic that, while one of the chief aims of
public education was to foster peaceful, harmonious communities, public schools have
actually caused great divisiveness.
Because public schools constitute the official government organ
of education, everyone wants them to reflect their own views. In a pluralistic society,
that is impossible. When one group forces its views on the public schools, it does so at
the expense of all others, creating inevitable turmoil. Battles over such things as
evolution vs. creation, book selection and censorship, and sex education are endemic to
state-run schooling. Free-market school systems, by contrast, have allowed people to
pursue both their own unique educational needs and their shared educational goals without
coming into conflict with each other.
One of the great promises of public schools was that they would
end social inequities, providing a quality education to all students regardless of income.
Today, market-oriented education reforms such as vouchers and tuition tax credits are
often opposed on the grounds that they would break that promise. However, those who worry
about low-income families falling through the cracks in an educational market cannot
ignore the reality that the public school system is currently dumping countless children
into a yawning educational chasm. The bulk of evidence, both historical and modern, points
to the superiority of markets (supplemented with a mechanism for subsidizing the education
of low-income children) over state school systems in their ability to serve the poor.
Throughout history, low-income parents have consistently made better educational decisions
for their own children than government experts have made for them, no matter how
well-intentioned those experts have been. Poor parents, indeed all parents, need to be
empowered to once again take control of their children's education.
T o many, the concept of an open market for education will seem
preposterous. After all, we have been led to believe that education is different--that it
does not benefit from market forces in the way that other enterprises do. In light of the
historical evidence, we have clearly been misled. While most fields of human endeavor have
seen astonishing growth and improvement over the course of the past century--while whole
new industries have been created and general intelligence has steadily
increased--educational achievement alone has stagnated, a fossilized legacy of central
planning and good intentions gone awry.
If the lessons of history can be distilled to a single
observation, it is that the institution of public schooling is not, after all, the best
system for advancing our ideals of public education. After 150 years of experimentation
and decades of disappointment, is it not time that we consider alternatives to the public
school system?

First Published in Education Week, Vol.
18, number 30, (April 7th) page 64-36